


Stars My Destination

by Dorksidefiker



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Human!Starscream AU, M/M, No War AU, skystar secret santa 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:08:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28189749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorksidefiker/pseuds/Dorksidefiker
Summary: In the end, what they both want is the stars.  Maybe they can give them to each other.
Relationships: Jetfire | Skyfire/Starscream (Transformers)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 27
Collections: Skystar Secret Santa 2020





	Stars My Destination

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Surveille, for the SkyStar Secret Santa (2020), who asked for a story featuring a Cybertronian exploration team discovering a complex alien lifeform, and Skyfire being a scientist studying the claim. Obviously, the prompt mutated a wee bit in the writing, but I hope you like it.
> 
> For clarity's sake, Dr. Surya Naudiyal is (obviously) Human!Starscream.

“Skyfire, this thing has to be seen to be believed!”

Skyfire hummed softly, twirling a stylus between his fingers. He’d been reading the report in front of him for so long that it was starting to all blur together. Just looking at the first thousand words documenting the trip out to Sector 57-R made his still healing wings itch. Several members of the team were competent enough pilots, but not for a long range mission, and the multitude of glossed over incidents made that _very_ clear. He _should_ have been with them on the initial survey. He _should_ have been seeing everything described so dryly in the report first hand, not reading about it-

“What’s that about a specimen?”

There was a distinct smirk in Brainstorm’s voice when he said, “I was wondering when you were going to get to that.”

Skyfire ran through the file again, swinging his legs over the side of the berth. “You need to stop letting Perceptor write these.”

“But he _likes_ writing the reports. Who am I to deny him such simple pleasures?”

Skyfire didn’t bother to comment on the faux innocence in Brainstorm’s expression. “Is it sapient?”

“Can’t get him to shut up.” Brainstorm waggled a hand. “Not that that’s any measure of _sapience_ -” They’ve both dealt with enough backers to know that.

“And it - he - he’s surviving in our environment?” Skyfire leaned closer, optics bright.

Brainstorm shook his head. “No dice, but we’re able to recreate the oxygenated environment he requires. _And_ the little guy has his own environmental suit. You’re gonna love it. These little guys are damn smart.”

Skyfire levered himself up onto his feet. “Where is he now?”

“Waiting down in the atrium. He wanted to see the, in his words, ‘native flora’.”

Skyfire didn’t _run_ to the atrium. There was still a report to finish translating from Perceptor-ese to Neocybex. Letting Perceptor write up the reports was useful, as much as he might complain about it when he had to read it - it bamboozled the laymen funding experiments, making them feel like more things were being done than was truly feasible, and got them to leave the team alone. But it made understanding anything one wasn’t present for a bit of a trial. Bits and pieces jumped out of him. _Bipedal, organic, roughly the size of a very small minibot-_

“You’re gonna want to download the language packet,” Brainstorm reminded him, “or you’ll never be able to keep up.”

* * *

Surya Naudiyal paced around the crystalline ‘tree’, filming every ‘leaf’ and ‘branch’. On Earth, it would have been deemed an exquisite work of art, the product of a master craftsman.

Truth be told, he was starting to feel a bit like one of those ridiculous tourists who spent their entire vacations experiencing the world through their phones. All he needed was a tacky shirt and shorts.

But this was for _science_ . This was for _posterity_. This was for Surya’s _immortality_.

His name was going to go down in history. The first man to explore outside his native solar system. A trailblazer, leading the way to the stars!

He needed more samples to bring home. If he could get one of those ‘trees’ to grow on Earth, he’d have the crusty old academics who’d turned their noses up at his theories beating down his door for just a _minute_ to look at it.

_And I’ll tell them_ **_exactly_ ** _where they can shove it._

Surya didn’t _giggle_. He’d deny making any such noise to his dying day, even if there was only Perceptor there to hear it. Talking the robots into leaving Earth with _just_ him was, far and away, his most brilliant scheme, and it was clearly paying off -- none of the mecha had so much as muttered a syllable about dissecting him. He was going to return to Earth covered in glory, and a hold loaded with samples.

He noted that Perceptor seemed to be distracted by something. Surya was still working on how to hack their wireless communications, but he liked to think he’d gotten good at telling when they were in the middle of a conversation over their networks. “Something going on?”

Perceptor blinked, attention finally returning to Surya. “The last member of our team is on his way. The xenographer.”

“Oh, yes. The one you said was injured.” Surya turned his attention to a flower composed of a delicate wire and crystal matrix. He could see the intricate latticework of metal within the crystal, pushing energy through it, causing the petals to unfurl when he came close.

“Skyfire, yes. He’s going to be fascinated to meet you.”

“Of course,” Surya purred, pressing a hand to his chest. A bulky glove to the torso of his rather cumbersome exo suit, really, but he thought he still made the gesture look graceful, though it failed to have any of its usual effect on Perceptor, who seemed to regard Surya the way _he_ did the flowers. A rather literal-minded creature, Surya had noted on the trip from Earth. Time with the rest of the self-styled exploratory team had taught him that this was far from true of other Cybertronians. “I’m a fascinating man.”

Oh, he was going to write so many papers when he got back…

Meeting another member of the exploratory team wasn’t exactly ideal for Surya’s plans; so far, Perceptor, Brainstorm, and Wheeljack had kept him isolated from the rest of their species, in spite of promises that he would soon be formally introduced to their ‘Prime’, which he had sussed out was some sort of spiritual and political leader, though none of the three seemed to put much stock in the _religious_ part. The part of him that had taken a few anthropology courses on a lark wanted to dig deeper into that. The engineer and astrophysicist wanted full and complete access to all their data banks on the movement of the universe.

Wheeljack had assured him more than once that the Prime was only waiting until he could put together a proper welcoming ceremony. It had been _ages_ since they’d made contact with another living species, and there were protocols to follow.

_Oh, you are a nine days wonder, aren’t you?_

Suyra’s attention was still largely on the flora when the single largest mecha he had yet seen since leaving Earth arrived. Every step made the ground tremble, made the crystalline foliage shake and ring out like bells. Surya had been around the Cybertronians long enough that the general size of them no longer impressed him, but _this_ mecha…. _Oh_.

Oh, that _wingspan_ . That _plating_.

What was he? Not a jet - _Brainstorm_ was a jet, and he was nothing like this. He’d seen enough that Surya was reasonably sure he could differentiate between that and the -- what had Wheeljack called himself? A _Grounder_ \-- and even the more unusual mecha like Perceptor, who transformed into the most fantastic piece of equipment he had ever seen. This mecha, this Skyfire, had to be some kind of flyer, with those very obvious wings-

He must be big enough to-

_oh_.

Of course. And no wonder the others had complained so bitterly about their ship during the return trip to Cybertron, if their usual mode of transportation was one of their own.

How much more convenient that must be, to be able to fly in something -- some _one_ \-- who could navigate all by _themself_.

“Doctor Naudiyal, allow me to introduce Skyfire of Antihelix.” Perceptor offered Surya a hand to stand on, lifting him so he could stand eye to eye, as it were, to the gloriously white titan before him.

He had the most astonishingly blue… eyes? No, they called them optics, didn’t they?... Surya had ever seen.

Clean lines, plating polished to the point where Surya could see his own reflection in him… a plane really shouldn’t be _handsome_.

_Head in the game, Naudiyal._

He was there to learn as much as he could about these people and their science, not admire the machinery.

* * *

“Told you. Skyfire has a type.”

Wheeljack passed a cube over to Brainstorm. “You sound like you’re setting him up on a _date_.”

Brainstorm turned the cube in his hands. “I mean, he’s getting on with the fleshy lil’ guy pretty well. They’re planning a trip to _Vos_.”

“It’s a research trip.”

“Yeah, that too. Can’t wait to see what Skyfire can get out of the cagey little fragger.”

“I _am_ rather interested to know what Doctor Naudiyal plans to write about us.”

“I’m sure you’ll be the first person he sends a copy to.”

* * *

Doctor Naudiyal -- Surya -- was every bit as fascinating as Skyfire had suspected he would be from what little Perceptor had written about him. He was like a beautiful bird, brightly plumaged when out of his exosuit, constantly in motion, and a mind like a knife. In spite of his homeworld being, in his own world, a tragic technological backwater in the face of Cybertronian advances, he’d worked out how to use the tech around him with remarkable speed, and had already begun to reverse engineer anything he could get his hands on.

Skyfire was getting so much information. He wasn’t sure why, beyond his ability to get Surya around the planet faster than anyone else on the exploration team, but the organic seemed to like him best. Wheeljack insisted that Skyfire was the only one of them that Surya didn’t keep hemming and hawing with. Skyfire could get him to share more than the most basic information.

And Skyfire knew that Surya was learning a great deal from him. Mutual studying, culturally and scientifically. Surya joked that Skyfire had the advantage of him. “You live so long that you can easily be a generalist in the sciences. I must maintain a far more narrow focus.”

When the Prime and the Senate finally deigned to meet him, Surya insisted that Skyfire be his designated escort.

Which meant that he largely acted as a perch while Surya strutted and preened, to the clear bemusement of the Prime, who had obviously been expecting some kind of diplomat. Instead, he was being confronted with someone the size of an especially small minibot with a personality the size of a metro-titan. And Skyfire… well, he was delighted to play along, truth be told. There was something about having senators come to him for explanations, for some kind of _in_ with the little wonder.

They were already talking about a second expedition to Earth. About quadrupling the budget for the exploratory team.

“You’re looking rather pleased,” Surya noted.

“It’s been a good night,” Skyfire told him with a small smile. “Our team -- our field of study --” He sighed. “We’ve been isolated from the wider universe for so long. Even with this new, more liberal Prime, and his focus on the sciences…” Skyfire carried him out to the balcony, looking up at the star studded sky above. “The Prime is focused on things that are of immediate use to the people. Understandably so. But it means that most of _our_ funding has to come from private donors. Eccentrics.”

“Gods bless rich eccentrics.” Surya let out a sigh of his own. “I’m… not unfamiliar with the issue. And of course, they always expect the money to be spent in the _stupidest_ of ways.”

They shared a laugh. Ah, the folly of investors.

“What would you do? If you could do anything you wanted?”

“I’d explore the universe. I’d try to see and catalogue everything there is to be seen.”

“Everything?”

“ _Everything._ ” 

“Could be lonely.”

“Oh… I think I could find a like minded person to go with me.”

“Yes. I imagine you could.”


End file.
